Joseph Billings

Mapping the North Pacific region was one of the central goals of the Billings-Sarychev expedition. Here: Chart of the northeastern part of Siberia of the Arctic Ocean and the northwestern coast of America with the determination of the voyage of the ships which were on the expedition of Captain Billings from the table volume of the German translation of the travelogue by Gavriil Andrejewitsch Sarytschew , published in 1806 .

Joseph Billings (* around 1758, probably in Yarmouth ; † 1806 in Moscow ) was an English navigator and hydrograph .

From 1776 to 1780 Billings accompanied James Cook on his third voyage of discovery to the Pacific Ocean . Because of this experience he received from the Russian Tsarina Catherine II the leadership of an expedition for the geographical and scientific exploration of the North Pacific . Together with Gavriil Andrejewitsch Sarytschew, Billings explored and mapped the Chukchi Peninsula , the Bering Strait , the Aleutian chain of islands and the Alaska coast during a nine-year voyage between 1785 and 1794 . On his return he switched to the Black Sea Fleet at his own request and carried out hydrographic studies on the Russian coastline of the Black Sea between 1797 and 1798 . On the basis of the data he collected, he then published an atlas that was highly valued by his contemporaries under the title Maps and views of the Black Sea area belonging to the Russian empire (1799).

Life

Origin and years of service in the British Navy

Joseph Billings was probably born in Yarmouth around 1758 to the fisherman Joseph Billing . After seven years of service in the British coal fleet and subsequent training as a watchmaker, he was hired in April 1776 under Captain Charles Clerke as an assistant astronomer on the Discovery and took part in James Cook's third and final voyage of discovery to the Pacific Ocean . After Clerke's death off the coast of Kamchatka , Billings switched to Resolution in September 1779 and returned to England in 1780.

After further years of service on the Conquestador and the Crocodile , Billings switched to the Resistance under Captain James King in July 1782 as Master's Mate (roughly comparable to a senior boatman ) . During this time he often accompanied King on his visits to Joseph Banks , the President of the London Royal Society .

In December 1782 Billings was imprisoned on debt, but was released in January 1783 through the intercession of Joseph Banks. A planned command on an East Indiaman to Kamchatka did not materialize.

In Russian service

The Billings-Sarychev expedition to the North Pacific

Billings and Sarychev brought back numerous ethnographic objects as well as descriptions and drawings of the indigenous population from the Aleutian Islands . Here: Unalaschka's wife and husband in their ceremonial clothes from the booklet of Sarychev's travelogue.

In October 1783 Billings joined the Imperial Russian Navy with the rank of midshipman and was promoted to lieutenant in the sea in January 1784 . When an expedition to the North Pacific was planned on the orders of the Russian Empress Catherine II , Billings appeared, based on his experience under James Cook, as the ideal candidate for this undertaking and received command of one of the two ships of the expedition with the rank of lieutenant captain .

By exploring the North Pacific region and the eastern borders of her empire, Catherine II hoped to strengthen Russian influence in the region. As the first major expedition to the region since Vitus Bering's voyage of discovery as part of the Second Kamchatka Expedition, which began around fifty years earlier , the company was given high priority.

The most important tasks of the expedition were the mapping of the coastline between the Kolyma River, which flows into the East Siberian Sea, and the Bering Strait , the mapping and exploration of the Chukchi Peninsula and the precise positioning of the Aleutian Islands and other islands between Kamchatka and the coast of America. The instructions for Billing were written by the German naturalist and geographer Peter Simon Pallas , who had already participated in the academy expeditions and at that time was working at the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences .

During the nine-year expedition, Billings, the chief hydrograph of the Russian Navy, Sarychev, and Robert Hall (later admiral and governor of Arkhangelsk ), who later joined them, surveyed large parts of the North Pacific and created precise descriptions of the areas they traveled through and of the indigenous population of Eastern Siberia. The journey over the Chukchi Peninsula undertaken by Billings under the most difficult conditions in the last section of the expedition between August 1791 and February 1792 provided detailed and reliable maps of the region for the first time. When he returned to Saint Petersburg in March 1794, Billings brought with him a wealth of material on the flora and fauna of Siberia and the Northeast Asian peoples. In honor of Billing, who was promoted to captain in the course of the expedition , Cape Billings on the Chukchi Peninsula and three other places were named after him. He was also awarded the Order of St. Vladimir , a Russian Order of Merit established in 1782 on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Catherine II's reign.

Hydrographic studies in the Black Sea

In August 1795 Billing switched to the Black Sea Fleet at his own request . In 1797 and 1798 he carried out several extensive hydrographic surveys of the parts of the Black Sea that belonged to the Russian Empire . The data collected in the process flowed into the Atlas Maps and views of the Black Sea area belonging to the Russian empire , published in 1799, which was highly valued by contemporaries as a navigation aid for the coastal waters of the Black Sea. On May 9, 1799, Billings was promoted to commodore .

Last years

Although he was still proposed on May 21, 1799 for command of a warship, he was retired on November 28, 1799. Billings stayed in the Crimea for a short time and then retired in Moscow , where he died in 1806.

literature

Unprinted sources
A brief overview of the material stored in the Russian Naval Archives is provided by John H. Appleby, Billings, Joseph , in: Oxford dictionary of national biography, Vol. 5: Belle - Blackman, Oxford [u. a.] 2004, p. 725. The expedition journals as well as reports, letters and maps Billings should be emphasized.

Printed sources
There are several travel reports on the Billings-Sarychev expedition , which were also published in German from 1803. The author of the main report is Gavriil Andreevich Sarychev ; Another expedition report was written by Martin Sauer, Sarychev's secretary.

• Journey to the Northern Regions of Russian Asia and America under Commodor Joseph Billings in the years 1785 to 1794; from original papers written by Martin Sauer, secretary of the expedition , translated from English and annotated by Matthias Christian Sprengel, Weimar 1803 ( digitized version of the Lower Saxony State and University Library, Göttingen ). Original title: An account of a geographical and astronomical expedition to the northern parts of Russia, performed… by J. Billings in the year 1785, etc. to 1794; narrated from the original papers by Martin Sauer , London 1802 ( digitized version of the Lower Saxony State and University Library Göttingen )
• Gawrila Sarytschew's Russian-Imperial Major General von der Flotte eight-year voyage in northeastern Siberia, on the Arctic Ocean and the northeastern ocean , translated from Russian by Johann Heinrich Busse, Leipzig 1805–1815 (digital copy of the Lower Saxony State and University Library Göttingen: Part 1 , Part 2 , Copper and map of parts 1 and 2 , part 3 : Robert Hall's and Billings voyages in the northeastern ocean and through northernmost Siberia: together with a dictionary of peoples there and the instructions given to Captain Billings ).

Representations

• John H. Appleby: Billings, Joseph , in: Oxford dictionary of national biography, Vol. 5: Belle - Blackman, Oxford [u. a.] 2004, ISBN 0-19-861355-5 , pp. 724f. (contains information on further literature and on Russian archives).
• Erich Donnert: The Billings Sarycev Expedition to the Northeast Pacific 1785–1793 and the natural scientist Carl Heinrich Merck , in: Europe in the early modern times: Festschrift for Günter Mühlpfordt, Volume 6: Central, Northern and Eastern Europe, Weimar [u. a.] 2002, ISBN 3-412-14799-0 , pp. 1023-1036.

Web links

• The Billings-Sarychev Expedition . Information on the expedition can be found on the website of the Russian-American project "Meeting of frontiers - Встреча на границах" (contains a digitized version of the map from 1844 General'naia karta Aziatskoi Rossii po noveishemu razdeleniiu na gubernii, oblasti i Primorskie upravlenitiskie with the travel routes of Russian explorers).